Archie Murchie’s action-packed career in the U.S. Forest Service began in 1929, when rangers routinely spent much of their time in the saddle, and ended in 1965 as they were becoming increasingly desk bound. The Free Life of a Ranger is Murchie’s...

Americans of Basque ancestry figure prominently in the history of Nevada. Sheepherding and innkeeping are the activities most commonly associated with the state's Basques in the mind of the general public, but that is an excessively narrow...

Meadows along the western edge of the Great Basin have been grazed by cattle ever since the first emigrant wagons pushed through in the 1840s. By 1850 permanent ranching operations existed, and today more than 80 percent of all agricultural land in...

In 1900 Churchill County was Nevada's poorest and least populated county, with fewer than 850 residents. It had no appreciable mining industry, and its arid valleys and basins could not support agriculture. Two federal projects would eventually...

Vincent P. Gianella was born at Marysville, California, on February 9, 1886 to parents of Italian and Irish descent, and he spent his boyhood on ranches in that vicinity. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree at Oregon State College in 1910, a...

Ruth Achard and Margaret McDonald, daughters of H. F. Dangberg, Jr., were born in Carson Valley on the historic Dangberg Home Ranch—Margaret in 1901 and Ruth in 1906—where they have lived most of their lives. In this 1984 interview, the sisters...

Erma O. Godbey was born in 1905 in Colorado, and she spent her early years in the Colorado mining camp of Silverton. After her marriage to Thomas Godbey, she lived in a number of other mining towns, arriving finally in Boulder City, Nevada. At that...

Fred H. Settelmeyer, a descendent of German immigrants, was born in Carson Valley in 1892. He and his family engaged in ranching in the western Nevada-eastern California-Douglas County area for more than seventy years. He attended local schools in...

Paul A. Leonard was born in Fallon, Nevada, in 1911. The family moved to Reno in 1919, and Mr. Leonard received most of his education there in the public schools and at the University of Nevada. After graduating from the university in 1936, he...

Charles H. Russell was born in Lovelock in 1903. He recounts the details of an active political life in Nevada. He has served Nevada as a member of both houses of the state legislature, a congressman, and a two-term governor. Russell has been a...

Rene Watt Lemaire is a native of Nevada, born in 1903. He has lived in Lander County all his life, engaging in business in Battle Mountain. Mr. Lemaire represented Lander County in the Nevada State Senate for more than twenty years. The oral...

Hugh A. Shamberger was born in Idaho in 1900. He attended schools in the Payette region and graduated from Stanford University with an engineering degree. He worked at surveying and engineering jobs in California, and when Hoover Dam was in the...

Starving sheep huddled about the carcasses of other sheep dead of exposure and hunger were found here today as snowplows and horses finally fought their way to the snowbound livestock, part of the sheep and cattle aided by the Operation Haylift...

Milton B. Badt, associate justice of the Nevada Supreme Court, was a member of a pioneer Nevada family. His father, Morris Badt, was one of the state's early merchants, arriving in Elko County in 1868. At Wells, in Elko County, the elder Badt...

Richard "Dick" Graves was born in Boise, Idaho, on August 23, 1912. An astute businessman, he spent nearly twenty years in the gaming industry in Idaho. When that state banned gambling in 1953, he came to Nevada in 1954 to start over. Though many...

Olephia "Leafy" King, a native Nevadan, was born in 1905, and spent her early years in Goldfield and Saulsbury Wash northeast of Tonopah. As a young child, she moved to a ranch in central Nevada, where she lived for the next three decades. Her...